


Escape Your Chains

by sageclover61



Series: Likened Water into Blood [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Healer Raphael (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Torture, Morning Cuddles, Needles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:36:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24824692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageclover61/pseuds/sageclover61
Summary: Raphael loves the domesticity of Sam waking up next to him, and Jack sleeping in their bed when the nightmares plague him. It's been far too long since there were any fledglings, and if Sam wants Jack to be their kid, Raphael wants it just as much.Nobody has explored the bunker as thoroughly as they probably should have with a child running around, but nobody was expecting the Men of Letters to have left a tortured angel somewhere in the bunker under heavy warding, until Jack finds him accidentally.
Relationships: Raphael/Sam Winchester
Series: Likened Water into Blood [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1572451
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	Escape Your Chains

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been tagged for needles and medical torture, but it's not super graphically depicted.
> 
> Think blood donation but grace.

"I wanna go outside," Jack whined, nosing Raphael's shoulder.

Raphael gently brushed the nephil’s back in the space between his wings. Their vessel’s eyes were closed, but it took less than a thought to determine that the sun was barely rising outside, and that all the rest of the bunker’s inhabitants were still asleep, which meant that Jack’s movement had not awoken Sam yet.

“Not right now, Jack,” Raphael whispered. “You can’t go by yourself, and I don’t want to leave Sam to wake up alone. No one else is awake yet.” The bunker had been warded in several different ways to keep Jack from flying off unsupervised again, but they had not done the same to the yard, which meant that Jack couldn’t be permitted to leave the bunker alone until sometime after his wings healed from his excursion into the Cage. “We’ll go right after breakfast,” they promised. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Jack pouted, settling back down between the archangel and the human.

Three quiet minutes passed, then, “When is Sam gonna wake up? Why’s he still sleeping? He  _ always  _ wakes up early.”

Raphael smiled as they exhaled slowly. It had been a very very long time since there had been fledglings in Heaven, and their responsibilities had not allowed them time for the domesticity that they were now able to share with Sam.

It was kind of surprising that the nephil had warmed up to them so quickly, but they were glad for it. “Sam needs more sleep than you or I do, and I don’t think he’s been getting enough.” They weren’t certain, but Raphael was pretty sure that Sam had not been sleeping well for a long time.

Possibly not since Amara had smote them during her first attack on Heaven.

Sam had spoken very little about the five years they had missed, and Raphael regretted that they had not returned sooner. But they had returned in time to save Jack’s life after the young nephil had nearly burned himself out and suffered a negative reaction to Gabriel’s grace, and they were thankful for that.

“Dean says he only needs four hours of sleep. I think Sam was getting less than that, until you arrived. Why does Sam need more sleep with you here?”

Raphael shook their head. Children were all the same. “I don’t think that Sam felt safe to relax and sleep. He worries so much about keeping his family safe.” They carefully poked Jack’s side, eliciting a giggle. They didn’t want Jack to feel responsible for Sam worrying about him. “He can sleep now because he trusts me to keep him safe.”

“You don’t want to leave him to wake up alone in case he stops trusting you enough to sleep.” They could feel Jack nodding to himself. It wasn’t quite an accurate statement, but Raphael didn’t feel like correcting him. It was close enough, and Jack was able to understand it well enough.

Raphael  _ could  _ have taken Jack outside to play, but they  _ wanted  _ to be here when Sam woke up. “I bet you haven’t explored every inch of the bunker yet,” they whispered conspiratorially. “There should be enough light now that you won’t get lost, maybe come back in an hour?” They poked Jack again, and then wrapped their arms around him. “Unless you want to go back to sleep with me.”

Jack giggled and pushed at Raphael’s arms. “No sleep. You’re sure it won’t be too dark out there still?” He pressed his cold feet against Raphael’s shin as he struggled to get traction.

The archangel considered. The young nephil  _ had _ been easily upset at getting lost in the dark passages of the bunker lately. Perhaps....

A small child-sized lantern appeared on the nightstand behind Raphael. The rabbit shaped lantern emitted a soft glow that wouldn’t wake Sam, but would brighten once Jack had taken it out of the bedroom. Raphael had also mimicked the capacity of the baby monitor in Jack’s bedroom, except instead of coming out of the pair on the nightstand, Raphael would hear it in their grace so it wouldn’t wake Sam.

If something happened and there was an emergency, they would wake Sam up before retrieving Jack. “Why don’t you take the lantern on the nightstand with you, Jack.” Raphael loosened their grip on the nephil. “When your grace is at a healthier level, I’d like to teach you a trick that you can do with your grace.”

“Really?” Before Raphael could confirm their intention, Jack had shifted upright and squealed happily. “Bunny! Is it mine?”

“It is.” They hugged Jack and then set him gently onto his feet on the ground. “Go have fun.”

“Okay!”

Raphael followed Jack’s retreating form with their eyes, and then rolled over next to Sam.

“Mmm,” Sam hummed, curling into Raphael’s chest. “We could have taken him outside.”

Raphael pressed a kiss against Sam’s forehead. “He wasn’t supposed to wake you.”

“Comes with the territory.” Sam yawned. “You were right, you know. I think I do sleep better with you here because I can trust you to have my back. I know you haven’t asked about it, but I’m sure by now you’ve guessed that I did not sleep well while you were dead, and I really didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” they whispered. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. You know, as a kid, I used to wonder why Dad went crazy after Mom died, but I think I get it now. I love you more than anything and then you were  _ gon _ e. Just like everyone else always is.”

Raphael winced. “I’m so sorry,” they repeated with another kiss to Sam’s forehead. They weren’t sure what they could say, so they simply held Sam. “I love you.”

The archangel held their human as he snuggled against them. They kept an ear out for Jack’s mumblings to the lantern, but mostly, Raphael lavished his mate with the attention he deserved.

* * *

Jack’s scream reverberated through Raphael’s grace, and through the bunker.

Sam jolted out of bed. “Raph? What’s going on?”

"Jask was exploring one of the lower basements, I don't know what scared him. Come on."

"He's not supposed to go down there, we haven't finished clearing all the rooms, making sure the BMoL didn't leave anything truly dangerous lying around." Sam slipped his shoes on and then followed Raphael out of the room.

They ran into Castiel and Gabriel halfway down the stairs.

"Didn't Jack sleep in your room?" Gabriel asked.

"I thought I was offering a safer alternative to going outside."

Jack was still screaming, which would have helped them find him if he hadn't talked to himself enough for Raphael to have been able to draw a physical map if they had wanted to.

The nephil was standing next to an open doorway, frozen in place even as he screamed at the contents of the room, which were not visible to Sam and the angels as they approached from behind Jack.

Raphael flirted forward around Jack and then turned around so that the child was looking at them and not at whatever was in the room. It was warded so well that even with the door open they could not feel that the room was there with their grace, let alone examine the contents.

"Jack," Raphael said gently, "are you hurt?"

Jack cut off from screaming again and shook his head. He pointed around Raphael. "Are they… Are they dead?"

Raphael didn't look. Whatever had been warded so well they couldn't feel anything inside the room, it was bad, and they had to get Jack out of here before they could allow themself to get distracted. "Will you go outside with Sam and Castiel? Gabriel and I will take care of this, okay?"

Jack reached for Raphael's pant leg. "You can heal the angel in there, can't you?"

Raphael resisted the temptation to look. Barely. "I'll try, but I need you to go with Sam and Castiel."

Sam stepped forward and picked Jack up. Raphael noticed how careful their human was to avoid peeking into the room. "Let's go, kiddo. We'll eat breakfast outside."

Raphael waited until Sam and Castiel had retreated up the stairs with Jack before finally giving in and looking into the room Jack had opened.

It was only because Raphael was ageless, and had already seen the worst of humanity time and time again, that they were able to look upon the sight of the room with an unwavering critical eye.

Dean would describe it as something out of a horror film, not that Raphael had watched any of those yet.

Raphael had believed all the scions of their grace, those capable of donating grace to any of the others, to be deceased. They’d disappeared throughout the ages, burning themselves out with each conflict between the rest of their siblings, or in combats between the angels and the demons. They weren’t all healers, but the other angels found it useful to replenish their grace after using too much power, to the detriment of the few who were capable of giving to everyone.

Raphael’s scions had been the fewest from the beginning,

The winged emaciated almost skeleton dangling shackled to an upright metal table glowed a pale blue with what little grace they had left to sustain them, and it took Raphael a moment to be able to identify that it was Ephraim, the once head healer of their Rit Zien.

Ephraim’s wings should not have been visible on the human plane, and they should  _ not  _ have been little more than brittle bone. There were no feathers and there was no membrane. There was nothing more than withered bones that looked seconds from disintegrating into a pile of dust.

His vessel looked in hardly better condition, sunken skin stretched loosely over bone, and glowing a faint blue with what was left of Ephraim’s grace working to keep it alive.

There were two clear plastic polymer tubes running from Ephraim’s right arm. One of them was clear, and seemed to be dry, while the other was stained a pale blue.

Grace blue.

Raphael stepped forward, seething in anger at what unenlightened humans had done to this angel. There had been too many deaths among their kind, too many wars and too much abuse of those in their lineage. What did humans think they were doing, draining the grace of an angel, the last one capable of sharing grace with others in the case of an emergency?

“Gabriel, I’m going to need your help.” They needed to disconnect the IV lines, and stabilize Ephraim into a position that was not dangling by shackles. Ephraim did not appear to be conscious enough to even register that he was no longer alone.

“What do you need?” Gabriel asked, hesitating before stepping into the room. “Are those IV lines?”

“They seem to have been constructed in a way to allow the unwillful harvest of grace. Can you get Ephraim horizontal while I unfasten these?”

Raphael waited for Gabriel’s nod, and then reached to gently remove the catheters from Ephraim’s arm. One of the needles, the one attached to the dry line, seemed to be a regular gauge, at least from what little Raphael knew about human medical procedures, but the second, which dripped with grace, seemed to be a larger gauge needle made of an inhuman material.

A celestial silver, perhaps. Capable of severely injuring an angel but probably not mortally wounding them. Except constantly draining an angel of their grace could be lethal, a fate suffered by many of Raphael’s lineage.

Gabriel rotated the metal table until it was horizontal, and then started unfastening the shackles binding Ephraim to the table. “Is he going to be alright?”

“We need to get him up to the infirmary, and I want this room scoured completely, once the warding is removed.”

* * *

“Why the  _ fuck  _ was there an angel in the basement?” Dean snarled as he stepped into the infirmary.

Raphael glanced at the hunter, before returning to what they had been doing, putting a dressing on Ephraim’s wings. It would be a long time before Ephraim would be able to fly again, and with it not being safe enough to hide them away within his grace yet, the wings would have to be wrapped. “If I’d decided you were among the responsible, I would have asked you that question a lot less politely.”

“So the men of letters just… kidnapped an angel and locked them in the basement? Shouldn’t you have noticed that one of your siblings went missing?”

Raphael glanced to were Michael and Adam were sleeping on one of the larger infirmary beds in the corner of the room. “Please lower your voice, Dean. Michael and Adam need to continue resting,” and Raphael wasn’t certain when Ephraim would awaken, but waking while Dean was almost shouting would not be the healthiest situation. “I have no idea when Ephraim was kidnapped. Last I knew, all the angels of my grace type were deceased.” The few who had still been alive at the end of the war had been casualties to the conflict with Amara.

“Well maybe if you hadn’t disappeared for five years, you could have kept better tabs on your siblings. That’s what you’re supposed to do, as an older sibling. You’re supposed to make sure they’re  _ safe _ . But you weren’t here, and I bet you have no idea how badly that hurt Sam. You hurt my baby brother.”

Raphael sighed. They had wondered when Dean would finally corner them about this. “I wish that I had been called back from the Empty sooner, but there’s nothing I could do, Dean.” They had been dead, asleep in an inaccessible realm unlike where human souls went. It was some very good luck that Sam’s letter had been able to wake them at all with Gabriel’s help.

“He was so angry and depressed all the time, Raphael. It was like he’d built a brick wall between himself and the world. I couldn’t talk to him, and he didn’t talk to anyone else. And then Jack came into our lives and it was like Sam had a purpose again.”

Jack was good for Sam. He seemed to be good for all of them, though Raphael hadn’t seen any interaction between Dean and Jack yet. “Sam has said very little about what has happened since Amara attacked Heaven.”

“He’s not convinced you’re really here, and you’d better fucking fix it. I like my brother  _ whole _ .”

Raphael nodded. They weren’t sure they could just fix it, but they weren’t leaving Sam again any time soon, and maybe what San needed most right now was time and consistency. “If you’ve time, could you help Gabriel with the room Jack found Ephraim in? We need to know if there’s anything lying around that could hurt Jack.”

“I take it Jack’s banned from downstairs until we finish a thorough inventory of every room? Yeah, I’ll go help the short stack.”

“Thank you, Dean.”

Raphael waited a moment for the hunter to leave the infirmary, and then finished wrapping Ephraim’s wings. “I wish you could tell me what happened to you,” they whispered, tracing grace passages with a sliver of their own. Ephraim’s levels were dangerously low, but it would be better if a transfusion of their grace could be avoided, especially if Gabriel and Dean found vials of Ephraim’s own grace. There seemed to be no damage to the receptors that regenerated grace levels, but it was impossible to say how long Ephraim’s grace had been near empty.

With Ephraim sleeping and his condition stable, Raphael drifted over to the sleeping forms of Michael and Adam. Adam’s recovery from his time in the cage had been slow, but the best medicine for him would be plenty of fluids, food, and rest.

Michael on the other hand… his grace still reeked of something dark and sickly. Raphael hadn’t figured out what was wrong with it yet, still concerned that whatever was wrong with it was contagious and would infect their own grace before they identified what was wrong with it. When they had time, they’d gathered a collection of hematology textbooks to read, to see if there was any comparison between a blood disease.

At some point, they would probably need to take a sample of their own grace and watch what happened when mixed with a sample of Michael’s grace, but as long as Michael’s condition wasn’t deteriorating, it could wait.

Raphael flitted back over to Ephraim. With the angel tended for the moment, the archangel was at a loss for what to do next. They wanted to check on Sam and Jack, but they were still outside with Castiel, and Raphael didn’t want Ephraim to wake up alone in an unfamiliar setting, not after so long in the empty room attached to a machine that siphoned out his grace.

The archangel considered the surroundings of the room. It wasn’t the worst of the rooms in the bunker, but it was still an underground room  _ in a bunker _ . There were no windows, so the only light was offered by the flickering of fluorescent lights, so it didn’t provide the comforting feel of  _ home  _ that the infirmaries of Heaven strived to provide.

They  _ could  _ take Ephraim outside, to wake up among the trees and with the instant knowledge that he was free. He might try to fly away, but his wings were wrapped well enough that making the ill suited attempt to fly probably wouldn’t hurt them any more than they already were.

Hopefully Ephraim would not awaken so panicked as to need immediate sedation.

* * *

Raphael carried Ephraim outside. Sam was sitting on the porch next to a pitcher of lemonade, leaning on the railing, while Castiel chased Jack around the yard. Jack was laughing, seeming to have forgotten the horrors of the morning, at least temporarily.

After putting Ephraim on the ground in the trees away from where Jack was playing, Raphael sat beside Sam on the steps.

“I really hope you didn’t just put someone to rest in the middle of the forest,” Sam said. “Castiel did that with a bee this one time, got so upset when someone stepped on it without knowing it was there.”

“Ephraim is, miraculously, still alive. But I felt it would be beneficial for him to wake up out here with the knowledge that he’s no longer being held captive.”

Sam nodded. He moved the pitcher onto a lower step before shifting so that his head was on Raphael’s shoulder.  _ “I missed you.” _

Raphael kissed Sam’s forehead. They knew what Sam was really saying, knew that he wasn’t referring to the amount of time they had spent tending to their abused sibling. There was no apology they could give that would help. Not while Sam believed that something else could come along and kill them again.

But maybe there was something they could give to Sam… Something that would comfort him.

With a thought, Raphael created a necklace with a small unbreakable crystal vial for an amulet. The vial glowed a light blue color, filled as it was with a drop of Raphael’s grace. “Sam, I’d like to give this to you.”

Sam looked down at the amulet in Raphael’s lap, and reached down to touch it. The silver metal was cool to the touch, but the amulet was just a little bit warm, and it seemed to pulse as Sam touched it. Like a heartbeat.

“I love it,” Sam said.

“I know the last five years were hard, and I wish I could make it up to you, but I’d like you to have this to remind you that I’m here.”

“It’s your grace,” Sam whispered. “Won’t you need it? What if Jack or Michael or the other angel need another transfusion?”

Raphael smiled sadly. “Grace isn’t finite, Sam. Just like human blood isn’t finite. It’ll regenerate, just like Jack is healing and Ephraim will recover.” They gently fastened the necklack around Sam’s neck.

“And Michael?”

“I need to do more research. But he doesn’t seem to be deteriorating, which has to be enough for right now.”

Sam kissed Raphael’s shoulder. “If nothing else needs to be done right now, what do you say to breakfast in bed?”

“What would you like for breakfast?” Raphael asked. They stood up, and held out a hand for Sam to take.

Sam took Raphael’s hand and pulled himself upright. “Fruit salad, I think. You know, fruit salad is good for humans who give blood.”

Raphael kissed Sam’s forehead, and then led the way back towards their room. “You know… the scions of my grace type were never very good at taking care of themselves when it comes to donating their grace and to an extent it led to their downfall, but in the beginning, I can remember lying in the garden with Gabriel, having overdone it with donating grace to him, and we ate apple slices in the sunshine.”

“Maybe after a nap, we should cut up some apple slices for Ephraim. Do you think he’d like that?” Sam asked.

“I think he’d like that very much.”


End file.
